The Northern Marches Pt.II

This week has been different to say the least. A chance meeting with a woman whilst walking the dog ended up in me photographing a house that she has developed, with more to come in the future. Nice. The guy who fixed my car wants me to produce a promo video for the engine cleaning side of his business, which will quite nicely recuperate the cost of fixing my car. Bonus. And another meeting with The Northern Marches. Always a pleasure.

As I've always said (and you can ask anyone, honest) if you want a rehearsal session to go well all you need is a WHAM! record and a poster of Harrison Ford. Fortunately James had managed to bring both items. Phew.

This session was primarily to capture some video for their erm... video. I now feel a step closer to what I want to do and its quite a learning experience. All we need now is interviews, some silly antics and some live footage and I can start to put it all together.

Langley Park Christening - Fearne

I haven't photographed many christenings as there doesn't seem to be a market for it. Or maybe there is and I haven't been looking. 

It's a bit like a wedding really but with more little people and no one got married. I approached it like any other assignment, be there and make photographs.

It did occur to me while I was there that young Fearne would have some pretty cool (if I do say so myself) photographs of her Christening. I would love to know what she thinks of these when she's 30.

I just love being repeatedly hit on the head with balloons too.

Happy days.

Middleton Lodge Wedding - Emma & Craig

On this date last year it was 21 degrees. On this date this year it was minus 2 and windy, very windy.

Family, friends and a Rock & Roll band helped to keep  things nice and warm and it was a pleasure to be there for the day.  Wonderful people and a wonderful place, what more can I say.

The Band were - Troubleshooters

The Venue was - Middleton Lodge

And I was - Ian Weldon

The Northern Marches

This is the start of something that has been floating around in my mind for some time. I like to document things, and people and what people do. I like music, I like bands, I was in a band once, but lets not mention that.

As my interest in video has grown to the point of just about bursting I have decided to start - try and start - doing small documentary pieces. These will incorporate photo, audio and video. I have absolutely no idea how to do it but I'm sure I can pick it up along the way. I thought that I would start by initially talking to the band and drinking some tea. Turned out nice, took a few images to get going and now we can start to plan the future of the project. Magic.

This is David and James from the Northern Marches drinking tea, smoking a pipe and having a nice stretch.

Realistically I expect my first documentary piece to be ready in about six years.......

Don't hold your breath.

Find the music here; The Northern Marches

I do use the Photoshop yes, but never for evil

Photoshop has become pretty redundant these days, banished to an app folder on my computer and rarely updated. Poor thing used to get so much attention too.

For me Photoshop was mainly a "fixer" to fix my pretty poor photography skills. I don't mean that it was a one click solution to my somewhat loose photographic ability, I mean I was more interested in Photoshop than photography. I enjoyed messing around with it and finding out what it was capable of.

I found out that it was capable of anything that you could imagine and in my 10 years of using it I have barely scratched the surface. 

Well, my love for photography grew out my love for Photoshop and I soon became aware that if I used it for enhancement of an already good image the results could be more than I ever imagined. I kind of leapfrogged one with the other for some time and became well versed in both until the emergence of Lightroom.

With Lightroom my workflow was simplified. I found that I wanted to use Photoshop less and less and I didn't want to leave the comfort of my Lightroom interface. This forced me to be a better photographer and I'm glad of it. 

I can now see bad photographs that have been "fixed" in Photoshop and I can also see amazing photographs made better with Photoshop, and believe me, there is a huge difference.

If called upon I can still muster some Photoshop skills to create an end result that wouldn't have been possible with a camera and Lightroom alone.

One of my most recent Commercial Projects could not have been created without Photoshop;

Darlington Rugby Club players join the Community Safety Partnerships of County Durham and Darlington in a campaign to tackle sexual violence.

Read the article here;  www.thenorthernecho.co.uk

It just wouldn't have been possible to get the lighting that I wanted in such a small space so the portrait and background were photographed separately.

The portrait was shot with a three light setup and processed in Photoshop to give me the grungy contrasty look that I was going for. I then shot the background and used the same processing technique as the portrait. I used some special Photoshop pixie magic to cut out the rugby player and place him into the background and the finishing touches were applied in Lightroom. Then the text blocks were added for the message.

I'm glad that Photoshop used to be a big part of my workflow and that when needed I can wake it up and use it for good.

The message conveyed in these images is simple and I'm am a huge advocate of this campaign. If you live in the Darlington area you will see these posters around soon. If you don't live in the area then share these posters and this message with your friends.

For more information on this issue see here; thisisabuse.direct.gov.uk

Thank you.